POLI 330N WEEK 1 DISCUSSION Chamberlain College of Nursing

POLI330N Discussion

Week 1: The Study of Political Science

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The reading this week discusses the role of political scientists and their attempts to treat the study of politics as a science. In these efforts, they build scholarship based on reason, balance, and supporting evidence, although much of this scholarship is based on theory.

Discuss how political scientists attempt to quantify data, manipulate data statistically, and attempt to validate hypotheses.

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Collapse SubdiscussionLaura Coates

Laura Coates

Feb 25, 2018Feb 25 at 5:37am

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Dear Dr. O and Classmates

When political scientists try to quantify data or produce numbers to prove their hypotheses they must stick to small questions of detail. Election returns, or congressional voting can be used to prove their hypothesis, but larger questions can not be quantified (Roskin, Cord, Medeiros, & Jones, 2014). There are many questions of why a specific law was enacted or how a political decision was made, and those questions can’t always be answered.

The answer to the question of why the government has decided may not be easy to accept or support our view of our lawmakers. James L Payne writes that many people envision our government as a “noble, elevated entity capable of helping people and solving society’s problems” (Payne, 2018). The problem is that many decisions made by the government are swayed by public opinion or personal prejudice.

Laura Coates